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Re: Make C41 look like E6? A challenge!

Originally Posted by engl

I've been thinking about a challenge very much like this, but I think the challenge would be more relevant for real shooting if there was no Velvia reference frame to compare to. Perhaps that could be the next challenge ?

But anyway, it will be very interesting to see how this turns out, good luck to all who participate!

Well I have another frame I can supply with no reference for the next challenge.. :-)

I agree that this is more realistic though.. I would hope that the 'best' conversion includes very few local colour or contrast changes (apart from maybe a grad) but we'll see what results we get.

Re: Make C41 look like E6? A challenge!

Why would anyone want to make C41 look like E6? The C41 process generates considerably more accurate color -- that's what that orange mask is for. C41 is also capable of much greater dynamic range; you can get great shadow detail without blowing out highlights.

There are only two advantages to E6 that I can come up with. One is WYSIWYG which is largely an advantage if what you're doing is time sensitive -- but if it's really time sensitive you'd probably be doing digital capture and cutting out the time and expense of film processing completely. The other advantage is that with E6, the graininess is in the shadows where it's less visible. But since this is a LF group, by the time you hit 5x4 this advantage is largely meaningless.

So the *real* question to me is: Can you make E6 look like C41? And the answer is: no, you can't.

Re: Make C41 look like E6? A challenge!

Here's my attempt with only across the board changes, except for one layer to simulate the graduated ND filter. Converted to sRGB for web display. The PSD file is tiny, but you can simply drag the layers over to the full sized image to see the effect.

I know it's not an exact match, but it's close. The part that's the farthest off is the sky, and I wonder how much better that would have been if the neg was shot with the same grad.

Re: Make C41 look like E6? A challenge!

Originally Posted by Bruce Watson

Why would anyone want to make C41 look like E6? The C41 process generates considerably more accurate color -- that's what that orange mask is for. C41 is also capable of much greater dynamic range; you can get great shadow detail without blowing out highlights.

There are only two advantages to E6 that I can come up with. One is WYSIWYG which is largely an advantage if what you're doing is time sensitive -- but if it's really time sensitive you'd probably be doing digital capture and cutting out the time and expense of film processing completely. The other advantage is that with E6, the graininess is in the shadows where it's less visible. But since this is a LF group, by the time you hit 5x4 this advantage is largely meaningless.

So the *real* question to me is: Can you make E6 look like C41? And the answer is: no, you can't.

Completely agree personally but some people don't, hence the challenge. As for why you would want to do so - ask the thousands of people addicted to Velvia 50..

Velvia 50 in particular has an amazing ability to purify colour, perhaps inaccurately but in a lot of peoples eyes, very aesthetically. Also, slide film has an different highlight handling than neg - it's highlights very often hold colour - adding to the rich tones..

In other words there are lots of reasons to want to have a film that is so tolerant of exposure and that handles large dynamic ranges but with the tonality of the velvias family for instance.

Re: Make C41 look like E6? A challenge!

Nothing beats a chrome for just plopping down on a lightbox and seeing exactly what you got. Hues tend to be a lot cleaner within the dynamic range of the film. And there
are certain instances when higher contrast is a distinct advantage. With color negs you've got a few more hoops to jump through, but also some new opportunities.